Planning for the Big Day

Hi guys! I’m going to take a very brief hiatus from food posting to share something special with you all. Next week Jason and I will be celebrating 2 years of marriage, and since I wasn’t blogging here when we first got married I never got to show you all how it all went down. Yes, you guessed it…wedding recap time!!! I’ve never told you this before but I actually had another blog before this one. It was all about the wedding planning, and the fun I had writing it is one of the things that inspired me to start Lawfully Wedded Wife!

In this post I want to share our engagement story and give you some snippets of how we planned the wedding! I haven’t looked at these pictures in YEARS and so this is going to be a fun ride. Warning: these posts are going to contain a lot of pictures and mushy memories, so if you’d rather ignore then just come back next Wednesday for almond butter cookies. 🙂

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I met Jason 6 years ago, the first week of school freshman year. Turns out that the two of us were both crazy/awesome enough to pick our college based on the fact that the best Tolkien scholar in the country was teaching there. Clearly our extreme dorkiness made us destined for each other. We became best friends the instant we met each other, and weeks later we were dating. We were both extremely naïve and inexperienced in the dating department because neither of us had ever been in a relationship. Extreme dorkiness can make high school dating difficult. 😛 The inexperience didn’t make things easy, and we ended up taking a “break” for a bit when I felt like things were just going too fast. I admit that I was trying to keep him in the friend zone, but he would not take no for an answer. It’s a good thing he didn’t. By October we were back together, and come holiday time that year I was completely head over heels.

I’ll never forget that crazy feeling of falling in love for the first time. We had SO MUCH fun together and did things we would never have done on our own. Exhibit A: going to an 80’s dance.

I know, we look super fly.

The two of us are very intense people and we don’t particularly like “taking our time” with things (which you can probably surmise by the fact that we’re about to be attorneys at 24). If I’m being honest, I’d say that by the spring of our first year together we already knew we were going to get married. Yes, we were only 18 at the time. Like I always say, you only need to get it right once. Who really cares what age that happens at? As long as you’re happy.

Don’t you love my haute cuisine and professional photos from back then??? 😛

I was always a girl who dreamed about her wedding day, so I was excitedly waiting for the day that Jason would propose to me. But when it actually happened it caught me by surprise. During October of our junior year (2008), we went into Boston to have dinner and celebrate our 2 year dating anniversary. We started with a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts (my favorite place in Boston!) and a casual Starbucks stop.

Where we were going for dinner was a surprise to me. After some time on the T and a couple blocks of walking, I found myself at the Top of the Hub, a restaurant on the top of the Prudential center that overlooks the Boston skyline. The views were incredible and I was glad I wore my fancy clothes!

We ordered our dinner (I got the duck, I still remember!) and I went up to go to the powder room while we were waiting for our food. When I came back, Jason was all red in the face and kind of uneasy looking. I sat down and immediately asked him what was wrong. His facial expression changed to a sweet smile and he took my hand from across the table. He looked me in the eye and told me about how much he loved me and about how amazing the last two years had been, then he let go of my hand and came around to my side of the table. I still had NO clue what was going on at that point and when he got up I thought maybe he was going to the bathroom. But when he knelt down on one knee and pulled something out of his coat pocket, I finally figured it out! Of course I started crying and immediately said yes when he officially asked me to marry him. Our waiter quickly came by with congratulations and gave us complimentary champagne. We were cracking up over the champagne because we weren’t 21 yet! Of course we didn’t tell him that. I spent the rest of our dinner not really paying attention to my food and just looking down at my shaky hand that now had a sparkly diamond on it. I couldn’t stop smiling.

When we got back “home” to the dorms we went on a picture taking spree! It’s not every day that someone asks you to marry them. 🙂

(Can someone please tell me why I wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup??? Geez…)

On the next school break when we were in Atlanta, my dad did our official engagement shoot.

We did the wedding planning on our own and a lot of it was DIY since we were college kids on a budget. Our color scheme was tiffany blue, ivory, and silver, and we went for a classic and traditional vibe. Jason and I spent months making our own invitations, favors, decorations, etc.

Since my mom is a baker and we’re both certified cake decorators, I was crazy enough to make my own wedding cake. To save on time and make things easier (we had 200+ guests to feed), my mom and I split up the work. I decorated a dummy cake (a fake cake made of styrofoam) with fondant to serve as the “display” cake, and my mom made a bunch of different flavored sheet cakes the night before the wedding that would be what our guests actually ate.

(That’s the dummy cake before I decorated it.)

Honestly, I had a BLAST planning the wedding. Since we had a 2-year engagement I had plenty of time to get everything done, and I loved every minute of it.

We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support of our friends and family. My maid of honor Emily came ALL THE WAY up to Boston from the University of Georgia to be with me when I bought my dress at the Running of the Brides.

My dress was inside there! Still a secret of course.

Come back tomorrow for the story of our wedding day! 🙂

-Lauren